Project description
Quantifying arsenic mobilization across global river deltas
Arsenic contamination in groundwater is a global health crisis, with levels in Southeast Asia and Europe often exceeding safety limits by up to 100 times. Predicting how arsenic moves from soil into water is currently difficult because we lack clear formulas linking soil chemistry to its release. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the CLEAR-As project aims to solve this by analysing soils from diverse international river deltas using advanced spectroscopy and laboratory testing. The project aims to quantify how specific soil components, such as iron and carbon, control arsenic mobilisation. By establishing the first quantitative relationships for arsenic behaviour, this project will support global goals for clean water and health, helping protect millions of people worldwide.
Objective
Groundwater contamination by arsenic (As) is a major global health challenge, threatening millions of people. In Southeast Asia, particularly Vietnam’s Mekong and Red River Deltas, groundwater As concentrations often exceed WHO limits by 10–100 times. In Europe, legacy mining has caused elevated As levels in floodplain soils along rivers such as the Ogosta (Bulgaria) and Mulde (Germany). Predicting to what extent As is released under specific soil and groundwater conditions remains extremely difficult because existing studies are mainly observation-based and site-specific. What is missing are quantitative relationships that link soil geochemical parameters (iron and manganese oxides, organic carbon, texture, and sulfate) to As mobilization and transformation.
To address this gap, CLEAR-As will: (1) establish a baseline of geochemical parameters for Mekong soil; (2) systematically quantify the individual and combined effects of these parameters on As mobilization and chemical form, and identify the controlling parameter(s); and (3) testing whether these controls show consistent effects across soils from Red, Ogosta, and Mulde River area.
CLEAR-As will be hosted at the Environmental Chemistry Group at the University of Neuchâtel, with expertise in laboratory soil incubations and synchrotron-based spectroscopy analyses, and will be supported by collaborators with expertise in As speciation (METAS, Switzerland), microbial analysis (EKUT, Germany), and field sampling (HCMUT, Vietnam). Through an interdisciplinary approach, the project will generate the first quantitative relationships between soil geochemical parameters and As mobilization and transformation. CLEAR-As will support Horizon Europe priorities and the UN Sustainable Development Goals on clean water and health, while equipping the Researcher with advanced skills in soil biogeochemistry and analytical techniques, strengthening the path to scientific independence.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences chemical sciences inorganic chemistry metalloids
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences geochemistry biogeochemistry
- natural sciences physical sciences optics spectroscopy
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
2000 Neuchatel
Switzerland
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